House votes to repeal country-of-origin labeling on meat WASHINGTON (AP) — Under threat of trade retaliation from Canada and Mexico, the House has voted to to repeal a law requiring country-of-origin labels on packages of beef, pork and poultry. The World Trade Organization rejected a U.S. appeal last month, ruling the labels that say where animals were born, raised and slaughtered are discriminatory against the two U.S. border countries. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has said it's up to Congress to change the law to avoid retaliation from the two countries. The law was initially written at the behest of northern...

Welcome to day 29 of the Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign! In those 29 days -- including April 12, the day she announced, and today -- Clinton has taken a total of eight questions from the press. That breaks out to roughly one question every 3.6 days. Of late, she's taken even fewer questions than that.

The American nonprofit OneVoice Movement – under scrutiny by a U.S. Senate panel over possible links to a campaign to oust Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – quietly filed paperwork that would allow it to engage in political activism after two leading Republican lawmakers questioned its use of government funds, FoxNews.com has learned.

It’s a curious time for people who believe in transparency and openness in government. They say they are for transparency. In 2013, President Obama boasted, “This is the most transparent administration in history.” But watch what his administration does. Today, it will issue new rules exempting a key administrative office that handles issues such as request for access to government email records from the Freedom of Information Act. That law is specifically designed to allow private parties to look at government documents that aren't privileged or involve national security. Ironically, the nation celebrated FOIA just yesterday with National Freedom of...

When Dr. Roy Spencer looked up summer temperature data for the U.S. Corn Belt, it showed no warming trend for over a century. But that was before temperatures were “adjusted” by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climate scientists — now the same data shows a significant warming trend.Spencer, a climate scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, said that the National Climatic Data Center made large adjustments to past summer temperatures for the U.S. Corn Belt, lowering past temperatures to make them cooler. Adjusting past temperatures downward creates a significant warming trend in the data that didn’t exist before....

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on Friday demanded that the Obama administration answer whether it has protected a known gang member from being deported — a man who this week was charged with murder. Grassley wrote a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson noting that press reports say Emmanuel Jesus Rangel-Hernandez has been charged with murdering four people in North Carolina. One of those murdered was a former contestant on America’s Next Top Model. “Mr. Rangel-Hernandez allegedly applied for and received deferred action under the president’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program,” Grassley wrote....

Feds look to adopt 322 pages of fresh taxes, regulations; FCC Chair Refuses to Testify before Congress Another wild power-grab. Power without accountability. The net is the very last frontier for free speech. — Despite google algorithms that consistently render — day in day out, year in year out — always render left-wing sites on first page search results; — Despite filters that block my site and sites like mine (Jihad Watch, The Religion of Peace, Creeping Sharia, Sharia Unveiled, et al) at work, school, and even US army bases and government agencies; — Despite search engines refusing to include...

Two prominent House committee chairs are “deeply disappointed” in Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler for refusing to testify before Congress as “the future of the Internet is at stake.” Wheeler’s refusal to go before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday comes on the eve of the FCC’s vote on new Internet regulations pertaining to net neutrality. The committee’s chairman, Representative Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah), and Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Fred Upton (R., Mich.) criticized Wheeler and the administration for lacking transparency on the issue.

Gallup CEO Jim Clifton told CNBC he might “suddenly disappear” for telling the truth about the Obama unemployment rate. The real Obama unemployment rate has never recovered and is still above 10%. Years of unending news stories on U.S. government programs of surveillance,rendition and torture have apparently chilled the speech of even top business executives in the United States. Yesterday, Jim Clifton, the Chairman and CEO of Gallup, an iconic U.S. company dating back to 1935, told CNBC that he was worried he might “suddenly disappear” and not make it home that evening if he disputed the accuracy of what...

NBC News anchor Brian Williams, who apologized on the air Wednesday night for lying about an experience covering the Iraq War, is now facing scrutiny over his gripping accounts of Hurricane Katrina, the disaster that burnished his nightly news bona fides almost a decade ago. Williams’ account of seeing a body float by in the French Quarter — which remained largely dry — and even a claim of catching dysentery from drinking Katrina floodwaters have raised eyebrows among bloggers and elsewhere since he took it on the chin this week over a claim that he rode in a helicopter that...

The Obama administration, after days of mounting tension, signaled on Wednesday how angry it is with Israel that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accepted Republican leaders’ invitation to address Congress on Iran without consulting the White House. The outrage the episode has incited within President Obama’s inner circle became clear in unusually sharp criticism by a senior administration official who said that the Israeli ambassador, Ron Dermer, who helped orchestrate the invitation, had repeatedly placed Mr. Netanyahu’s political fortunes above the relationship between Israel and the United States.

President Barack Obama has a moral responsibility to push back on the nation’s journalism community when it is planning to publish anti-jihadi articles that might cause a jihadi attack against the nation’s defenses forces, the White House’s press secretary said Jan. 12. “The president … will not now be shy about expressing a view or taking the steps that are necessary to try to advocate for the safety and security of our men and women in uniform” whenever journalists’ work may provoke jihadist attacks, spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters at the White House’s daily briefing.

Demonstrators temporarily shut down two large malls in suburban St. Louis on one of the busiest shopping days of the year Friday, as rallies were held nationwide to protest a grand jury’s recent decision not to indict the police officer who fatally shot 18-year-old Michael Brown in nearby Ferguson.

The Army has no plans to release the results of an investigation into Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl's disappearance and capture by the Taliban in 2009, a spokesman said Friday. "We recognize the importance of the media and the public understanding of our investigative process, and look forward to future discussions on this issue. However, the Army's priority is ensuring that our process is thorough, factually accurate, impartial, and legally correct," Army spokesman Wayne Hall said in a statement.

While the political commentators in the nation's capital are wrapped up in the debate over what to do about ISIS, and as one third of the Senate and nearly all members of the House campaign for re-election, the president's spies continue to capture massive amounts of personal information about hundreds of millions of us and lie about it. The president continues to dispatch his National Security Agency spies as if he were a law unto himself, and Congress -- which is also being spied upon -- has done nothing to protect the right to privacy that the Fourth Amendment was...

The first federal prosecutor to probe the financial dealings of Bill and Hillary Clinton says he was poised to bring high-profile indictments against top Arkansas political and business figures — based in part on testimony from a chief witness against the then president — when he was abruptly replaced by a panel of federal judges, throwing his investigation into turmoil. "I was angry, frustrated and above all disappointed that I was not going to be able to carry through and finish bringing the indictments," writes Robert Fiske, a former U.S. attorney who served as the original independent counsel in charge...

As a freshman at Columbia University in 1970, future Attorney General Eric Holder participated in a five-day occupation of an abandoned Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) headquarters with a group of black students later described by the university’s Black Students’ Organization as “armed,” The Daily Caller has learned. Department of Justice spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler has not responded to questions from The Daily Caller about whether Holder himself was armed — and if so, with what sort of weapon. Holder was then among the leaders of the Student Afro-American Society (SAAS), which demanded that the former ROTC office be renamed...

One of the biggest threats to a civilized, free society occurs when prosecutors abuse their power and allow politics to drive their administration of the criminal-justice system. Two recent examples show how liberal, partisan prosecutors misused their authority and politicized justice.

President Obama apparently isn't the only one who gets his information about the IRS targeting scandal from the newspaper. During an exchange today on Capitol Hill between Republican Rep. Ron DeSantis and Deputy Attorney General James Cole about the IRS targeting of conservatives, Cole said he found out about Lois Lerner's "lost" emails through news reports. DeSantis: “Mr. Cole, we learned in Congress on June 13th, 2014 that two years-worth of Lois Lerner’s emails were missing—the IRS would not produce those. When did the Justice Department learn of that fact?” Cole: “I think we learned about it after that from...

Rep. Darrell Issa on Thursday called Lois Lerner’s recently surfaced emails a “smoking gun” in the IRS scandal. “[This is] a smoking gun, this is Lois Lerner clearly cautioning people not to say things on email and be delighted to find out that the local instant chat they have, this Microsoft product, wasn’t tracking what they said,” Issa, a California Republican said on Fox News.

Obama administration officials refused to fully explain to key senators the justification for freeing five senior Taliban leaders that the White House had once considered to be among the most dangerous prisoners being held in the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, according to senior Senate insiders familiar with a closed-door briefing held Tuesday for members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Top Obama administration officials continued to defend the decision to skirt U.S. law and not inform Congress about the deal, telling lawmakers that “it was worth it; period,” according to one Senate insider familiar with Tuesday’s classified briefing. Officials maintained...

The buck stops with the president. Or maybe it's the secretary of Defense. As the fallout grows over the controversial Taliban prisoner swap, White House officials are emphasizing that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was the one who "signed off" on the deal -- a move one Republican lawmaker suggested is an effort to shift blame. "I hope they're not just pushing him out to be a fall guy for this," Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Calif., told Fox News. According to a congressional source, Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken refused to answer directly when asked point-blank during a briefing with House...

Veteran Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki cannot get a handle on the recent scandalous treatment of veterans in VA hospitals, where more than 40 sick men were allowed to die without proper follow-up treatment. A cover-up allegedly followed. When the Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal broke under the George W. Bush administration, heads rolled. So far, Shinseki seems immune from similar accountability. Almost nothing that former Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius promised before, during or after the implementation of the ill-starred Affordable Care Act came true. She was also cited by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel...

Early in Obama's first term, Attorney General Eric Holder submitted a formal, written response to Congressional inquiry into Fast & Furious. This official DOJ testimony attempted to absolve the DOJ of responsibility for F & F by fraudulently covering up information concerning who knew what and when. When information came to light which conclusively proved the Eric J Holder perjured himself, and the DOJ under his direction with malice and forethought attempted to deceive Congress, Holder simply "withdrew" this sworn, official testimony. Since this time, Holder's DOJ has stopped trying to lie its way out of compliance. Now, the DOJ...

"I have been proud to stand along side of you in supporting efforts to advance the cause of justice that has always been at the center of this , this administrations work I am pleased to note that the last five years have been defined by significant strides and lasting reforms, even in the face, even in the face, of unprecedented, unwarranted ugly adversity. And if you don't believe that, you look at the way ...forget about me... forget about me , you look at the way the Attorney General of the Untied States was treated yesterday by a House...

Chicago police did not report about a quarter of the aggravated assault and aggravated battery victims in its crime statistics in 2012, an audit by the city's top watchdog found. The department failed to follow state guidelines by counting each aggravated assault or battery as one incident, not each victim as it should have, leading to the underreporting because of all the incidents that involved multiple victims, according to the inspector general's office. The department said it has reported aggravated assaults and aggravated batteries in this way for many years, meaning Chicago's statistics on these crimes — including nonfatal shootings...

So when did Ann's and Obama Sr.'s "whatever happened happened fast" wedding happen? For no apparent reason, confusion abounds among Obama's biographers over the wedding date: 1. Dreams claims that Ann and Obama Sr. were in married "in 1960"; similarly, Mendell's 2007 book claims that the couple were married "sometime in late 1960" when they "slipped off alone to the island of Maui"; and both Obamaland (2008) by Ron Jacobs (with contributor David Maraniss) and a 2007 Washington Post article claim that the two were married "late in 1960." 2. A 2007 Chicago Tribune article vaguely claims that Ann and...

CNN reporter Don Lemon had some shockingly revealing things to say when asked about the criticism the President has received. He shared with his audience that journalists actually take into account his race before criticizing his policies.

The attorney for Lois Lerner, a central figure in the IRS scandal, signaled Wednesday that his client will not comply with a request to testify on Capitol Hill next week. Attorney William Taylor said Lerner, who resigned last year as the agency’s tax-exempt organizations chief, will return and testify only if compelled by a federal court or if given immunity for her testimony. Taylor stated his position in a letter to Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. He was responding to a letter Tuesday from Issa saying, in part, that Lerner’s testimony...

On Friday, MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell gave left-wing environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a platform to denounce the Keystone Pipeline. Kennedy ranted: "The people who are promoting this are the Koch brothers, who spent $2 million trying to hurt him [Obama], the Tea Party people in Congress, and the Republicans who have been trying to block every part of his agenda.

The 44th President of the United States is, of course, Barack Hussein Obama II. Barack Hussein Obama II has also been known by names such as Barry Soetoro, Barry Obama, and Barack Hussein Obama (Soebarkah). To be sure, only supposed madmen note that the name "Soebarkah" originated in very tight spatiotemporal proximity to the operations of a cult called "Subud" that was founded by a Muslim named Mohammad Subuh -- a cult wherein personal name changes were the order of the day.

**SNIP** Eight months later, the probe has shown few public signs of progress, and many of the tea party victims say they still haven’t heard from the FBI or Justice Department lawyers. House Republicans said they were concerned about the direction of the probe, and Rep. Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican and a subcommittee chairman on the House oversight committee, asked Ms. Bosserman to testify at a hearing next week. The GOP has identified her as the lead lawyer on the investigation, and they have questioned her role, given her history as a significant political donor to President Obama’s 2008 and...

Senate Intelligence Committee members did not include important testimony from Benghazi whistleblower Gregory Hicks about security at the U.S. mission in their final report, which had the effect of blaming the fallen ambassador and protecting a top State Department official from responsibility for the attack. "I was interviewed by the Select Committee and its staff, who were professional and thorough. I explained this sequence of events," Hicks (who worked with the late U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, in the lead-up to the attack) explained in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Thursday. "For some reason, my explanation did not...

John Dodson, the federal agent who blew the lid off the Justice Department’s “Fast and Furious” gun-walking scandal, claims the FBI had ties to the men who killed U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in 2010 near Nogales, Ariz. In fact, Dodson says the Mexican bandits who gunned down Terry were working for FBI operatives and had been sent to the border to do a “drug rip-off” using intelligence gathered by the DEA. Dodson, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said he doesn’t think the FBI was part of the rip-off crew, but the...

The Justice and State departments are now citing a year-old FBI investigation and a future criminal prosecution to block access to survivors of last year’s Benghazi terror attack. In an Oct. 28 letter to Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.,the State Department’s Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs, Julia Frifield, refers to "significant risks" and "serious concerns about having the survivors of the attack submit to additional interviews." Graham has been asking since last year for the FBI’s transcripts of interviews with State Department and CIA survivors who were evacuated to Germany after the Sep.11 attack on the U.S. consulate. He and other...

Discussing the Obamacare disaster in the Rose Garden on Monday, President Obama led with a phrase to which we have become accustomed: “Nobody,” the president emoted, “is madder than me” about this mess. Along with “let me be clear” and “make no mistake,” this is a favorite construction. Obama, you see, is more concerned for and correct about everything than everybody else at all times. “Nobody shares the frustrations of the American people more than I do,” he told WABC earlier this month; “nobody is more frustrated” than he about the IRS scandal; “no person,” the president affirmed during the...

It is outrageous enough that the IRS and The White House were working in tandem so that the IRS shared confidential taxpayer information with the president and/or his aides. What makes the law-breaking doubly contemptible is that the information was shared in the context of a lawsuit against the despicable, unconstitutional ObamaCare abortifacient/contraceptive mandate: [Top ObamaCare official Sarah Hall] Ingram attempted to counsel the White House on a lawsuit from religious organizations opposing Obamacare’s contraception mandate. Email exchanges involving Ingram and White House officials — including White House health policy advisor Ellen Montz and deputy assistant to the president for...

Remember when the media rushed to talk about transparency in the Barack Obama Â“Hope and ChangeÂ” era? Good times, good times. Leonard Downie, who once worked as the executive editor of the Washington Post and wrote a novel about Washington corruption and the Iraq War, finds a bigger and non-fictional problem in the successor to George W. Bush. Downie gives the Post a preview of his report from the Committee to Protect Journalists which outlines the Obama war on reporters and their sources: Â“A memo went out from the chief of staff a year ago to White House employees and...

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday blasted Congressional Republicans for their “wrong-headed” budget brinksmanship he said led to a partial government shutdown, while maintaining that city services are still immune to the impasse in Washington. “It’s time for the Republican leaders in Congress to step up, provide leadership and tell a small minority in their party to stop trying to hold the country hostage to their ideology,” Emanuel told reporters at an unrelated press conference on Wednesday. As the first federal shutdown in nearly 18 years entered its second day, Emanuel said city services are still unaffected by the shutdown,...

Ms Miriam Carey, a well mannered dental hygienist from Stamford Connecticut, may have been just touring Washington D.C near the Capitol Building when she surprisingly got caught in the midst of hundreds of Obama "Barrycades" which have been installed at a multitude of places around D.C. and other federal properties - "because of the government shutdown," allegedly. Washington D.C. had been increasingly blocking off streets close to the residence of the Director of Barrycades, President Barack Obama, even before the shutdown. A city that was once a joy to tour and view now looks more like Islamabad with all...

The Holder DOJ stopped at nothing to convict five New Orleans police officers.In a shocking case of “grotesque” misconduct by federal prosecutors, a federal judge in Louisiana has ordered a new trial for five New Orleans police officers convicted for a shooting on the Danziger Bridge on September 4, 2005 — in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina — and for a subsequent cover-up. This is another black eye for the Holder Justice Department that the media have barely covered. Participating in the misconduct that the judge said had created an “online 21st-century carnival atmosphere” was Karla Dobinski, a lawyer in...

The leaders of the Administrative Review Board that investigated the attacks on US facilities in Benghazi, Libya, appeared before the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee Thursday, and offered testimony that further undermined the already-tattered credibility of their own probe. In descriptions that emphasized their friendly, even collaborative dealings with the top State Department officials who were ostensibly among the subjects of their investigation, Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Admiral Mike Mullen defended their work and shrugged off criticism from Republicans on the panel. But the substance of the responses from Pickering and Mullen, respectively chairman and vice chairman of the...

The Weekly Standard offers a glum assessment of Obama’s fiasco in Syria: “With the Russian proposal on Syrian chemical weapons, the United States is being escorted out of the Middle East.” Reset with Russia was originally a strategic priority for the Obama administration because it saw Moscow as the key to getting Iran to come to the negotiating table. Putin, from the White House’s perspective, was destined for the role of junior partner. Now Putin has turned “Reset” upside down. By helping Obama out of a jam with Syria, Putin has made himself the senior partner to whom the White House is...

A powerful blast on the main street in the Libyan city of Benghazi early Wednesday damaged a foreign ministry building and a branch of the Central Bank of Libya, an eyewitness said. The explosion comes on the anniversary of the September 11, 2012, assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens. Eyewitness and Benghazi resident Sami Berriwen told CNN he saw no casualties as a result of the blast in the eastern city, which occurred at about 7 a.m. (1 a.m. ET.) Berriwen, a university student, said that if the blast had happened...

Susan Rice Will Brief Congress on Syria on Anniversary of Benghazi September 8, 2013 - 2:36 PM By Terence P. Jeffrey (CNSNews.com) - Susan Rice, who falsely told the nation that the terrorist attacks in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012 had developed out of a spontaneous demonstration against a YouTube video, will mark the one year anniversary of those attacks by briefing Congress to make the administration's case for authorizing President Barack Obama to use military force in Syria. The administration has decided to make Rice a key point person for pushing military intervention in Syria. On Monday, Rice will...

Hicks – who had a brief phone conversation only hours before with Stevens before the line went dead — was informed of his death by Libya’s prime minister. snip Hicks said he doesn’t understand why more military resources were not sent to Benghazi after he notified State Department officials in Washington that the consulate was under attack. “I don’t know exactly what was available…And I still don’t quite understand why…they couldn’t fly aircraft over to Benghazi,” he said. “When I was a kid, I grew up watching western movies… the cavalry always came,” Hicks said in an interview taped Friday...

Barack Obama is, without question, the most embarrassing president of my lifetime — and that is saying something, since my life so far has encompassed 12 presidencies, some of which have brought a lot of embarrassment to the nation. Even Richard Nixon, with his Watergate scandal, Jimmy Carter, with his malaise, and Bill Clinton, with his lewd behavior in the Oval Office, could not top this president for pure, unadulterated disgrace. Of course, in Obama’s case, it is not a matter of personal scandal like it was for Clinton. By telling the world a year ago that he was drawing...